Shared Hosting vs. VPS Hosting

It is very important to choose a proper web hosting plan while planning to start a website. You can host your content on the website through various types of hosting like shared, VPS, dedicated and cloud. Here you can find the details of shared and VPS hosting in relation to:

Meaning

Advantages and Disadvantages

Comparison between Shared and VPS types of Hosting

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is like living in an apartment where you share a common space with your neighbors. You cannot customize anything but you share maintenance cost and responsibility with your neighbors. Shared hostingis the most commonly used method of hosting, and is used for customers who have chosen trial or low-cost hosting packages.

You can opt for a Shared hosting if you fall in any of the following categories:

Having a plan to start–up a venture using your own or borrowed capital.

Expecting a low initial rate of visitors say 500 per day.

Limited number of email accounts to be set up as you currently have only a limited number of employees.

Planning to host and maintain only your web site and a couple of blogs etc.

In any of the following cases you can try the shared hosting option before committing yourself for something bigger.

Advantages of Shared Hosting

It a good option if you have a limited number of blogs and smaller websites as it is easy to maintain.

It has an economical advantage.

Technical maintenance of the server is not required, therefore you do not need a special skill set to handle your website.

You can demand for extra storage space.

All kinds of software, including virtualized software can be installed.

Disadvantages of Shared hosting

Limited number of resources.

Your website performance may be affected by other websites hosted on the shared server.

You might have to face long term problems with scalability and backup.

There is a possibility to face security issues for sharing a common server.

You might have to configure firewall settings for certain applications.

You will have a limited customer support only.

The good news is that with GreenGeeks, many of the disadvantages have been taken out of the equation or systems have been developed to improve to ensure shared hosting is a great option for the majority of website owners. Over 90% of our customers use our shared hosting service and are very satisfied with the service that they receive.

VPS Hosting

Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting is like living in a simplex or half-plex where you can customize everything to your own tastes. However, you still need to maintain your own area. Companies that deal with resource heavy applications and secured data most often use VPS.

You can opt for VPS hosting in any of the following cases:

Expansion of your business beyond shared hosting level.

Expectation for a significant increase in traffic over the next few months.

Plans to work with confidential secured data in your business.

Intention to increase headcount which in turn requires a greater email capacity.

Plan to host multiple sites, blogs or different applications very soon.

Advantages of VPS Hosting

You will have a huge space and bandwidth which enables you to do what you like.

You can upgrade or downgrade your subscription at any time.

You can configure anything you wish on the server as you own it.

Run your own batch files to create multiple services inside the server using shell access.

You can avail an extensive and dedicated 24/7 Customer Support which will help you have better security levels.

You can have easy scalability and backup in this method.

User partitioning enables you to custom firewall configurations.

Disadvantages of VPS Hosting

You need a dedicated system administrator to take care of your server.

It is usually costly so you should be careful with cheap offers.

You must be particular with certain applications as they might have issues running in a virtualized environment.

Differences

Shared hosting and VPS hosting have a lot of differences as listed below:

Resources: Shared hosting will have access to a limited number of resources only while the VPS hosting allows private disk spaces, having greater resource availability.

Security: Shared hosting is comparatively less secure than VPS hosting.

Platform: Shared hosting provides a basic level of file system and compartmentalization while GreenGeeks offers OpenVZ and Xen Linux Virtualization.

When to move from Shared hosting to VPS hosting?

You can move from Shared hosting to VPS hosting in any of the following cases listed below:

About The Author

Kaumil Patel is the Chief Operating Officer of GreenGeeks and has over 13 years of experience in the web hosting industry working for and owning web hosting companies. Kaumil's expertise is in marketing, business development, operations, acquisitions and mergers.

Comments

Thanks! This is a great overview of the differences between share vs VPS hosting. My travel blog has outgrown its shared environment and I’m keen on now upgrading to VPS. I can do so confidently after reading this post.

It’s hard to answer that question because it depends on what kind of website your running, what kind of scripts, plugins, etc. A VPS is totally capable of handling 10’s of thousands of visitors per day sufficiently. What kind of website are you looking to run?